The weekend hit with an invigorated bash as we assembled at the S.P Jain Institute for our Startup Saturday event on September 14, 2013. With close to 70 turn ups, it was quite a mix of enthused students, professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs; most of who were attending the session for the first time. Inquisitiveness was obvious. This was appeased as Rahul made an opening with an introduction to 10000Startups and Headstart. The pondering minds were all set with ears to the success stories of the entrepreneurs with us.
This Saturday event was focused on the Food Business. Startup Saturday brought on the dais, the entrepreneurs, who have ventured into this industry, but have taken a different path altogether.
The instigation of sharing the success story was done by Ms. Ankita Tandon – the founder of DeliveryChef.in. She began with her days when she was working with a company abroad. An MBA in Finance from Warwick Business School, Ankita conceptualized this unique business model with her friend and Co-founder of DeliveryChef.in, Aditi, who were working together abroad. This introduced both of them to the solace of technology that service providers used over there & a westernized way of business.
Upon their return to India, they puzzled out a plan and decided to implement their idea and hence DeliveryChef.in was born. At an initial stage when they started approaching local shetty restaurants for a tie up, they were even snubbed with a comment, ‘ Koi order nahi karega, aap shadi kar lijiye’. However, this did not dilute their zeal and belief in their concept. With their relentless efforts and effective strategies, they managed to liaise with good food joints and the business took off. Today, Deliverychef.in is the quickest, simplest and cash-friendliest online portal for ordering food. One can pick from our massive list of local restaurants for home delivery or takeaways. It allows companies and individuals to order food online from their local eateries – restaurants, bakeries, mithai shops and more. It’s a dais that brings the ‘click away’ restaurants directly to the hungry patrons with F1-fast lives and corporate.
Ankita further gave an insight on the business model and its functions too. It operates on the simple model of Order Booking Only, No Delivery, presently in the city of Mumbai. The delivery is managed by the restaurant and DeliveryChef.in earns its profits on the commission for taking the bookings online. The Application Programming Interface (API) helps to manage the menu of all the registered food outlets. Infact, Smoking Joes has the API of DeliveryChef.in. One can pre-order on the site. However, delivery is done only during the working hours. The site offers both Online Payment as well as Cash on Delivery option to the customers.
The biggest challenge faced by DeliveryChef.in today is on keeping a check on stocks, i.e., since the menu updated is not on real-time basis, it is not easy to keep a track of the food which is not unavailable with the joints. So, many a times it happens that the ordered food is not in stock.
Ankita has further gone in for a backend application on deliverchef.in which is on beta testing right now. This provides a handy data analysis which can be used to track the number of orders by individuals and the kind of food that is ordered more often. Post the insight on her business, a lot of questions were thrown to Ankita by the captivated audience on her business to which she answered very candidly.
The awe-inspiring session went on with the advent of yet another entrepreneur on the dais.
Hitesh Shah is zealous entrepreneur who has transformed a business of a local Kirana shop and Super Market to an organized E-Kirana Store – Bachatmandi.com.
Bachatmandi.com is an e-commerce retailer providing home deliveries across Mumbai. With its own warehouse and delivery system in place, it is able to sustain the unmatched customer service, discounts on quality stuff & express deliveries.
It operates on the super principle of PACKAGE.
P stands for Pricing – offering discounts on almost everything.
A Stands for Appeal, Attraction – seamless attractive packaging
C stands for Convenience – order from anywhere; Online or by Phone
K stands for Knowledge – always updated about new brands in the market
A stands for Assurance – great service, great quality
G stands for Green – packaging material used is eco-friendly
E stands for Ease of Payments – option of Online payment as well as Cash on Delivery
While sharing this, Hitesh recalled about the challenges he faced initially. A wrong anticipation of demands of fruits and vegetables and of commodities with low shelf life, led to over stock of these items. Besides, bachatmandi.com was also more dependent on online orders which limited the growth of business. Also, with few order in earlier days, it still had to send the vehicles for deliveries across the city.
However, Bachatmandi.com has successfully overcome these challenges and has come a long way in 3 years. With the dearth of organized player in the sector and more and more consumers changing their buying habits, Bachatmandi.com has its edge in the business. It treats its competition as partners as the concept is marketed by them and a brand by itself. The saga concluded with addressees satisfying their queries on Bachatmandi with the answers from Hitesh.
Amid these connoisseurs were the tyros who presented their Lightening Pitch on their businesses.
Neha Dadia from Endorphinoy Deserts had a unique concept of customizing
deserts as per the needs and taste of the customers which she eventually
had crafted after logical research and feedback from them.
Gaurav Munjal made a presentation on his endeavor Flat.to which is an online real estate portal with focused customer base of students only. Flat.to liaises with brokers and helps students with their accommodation needs
Ritika Sharma – shared her idea and inspiration behind these wonderful concepts of sharingdard.com &
yourcandidfriendd.com. These sites, as the name suggest, helps you to talk your heart out to someone
you are not bothered how will he/she think about you. A helping hand, a support, a shoulder is always needed.
Three of them Ritika, Neha and Gaurav received views and queries from the addressees to which they responded candidly.
Last but not the least the event concluded with the Open Session wherein many aspiring entrepreneurs discussed their business ideas with everyone. It was truly successful and enlightening event for all!
REPORTED BY:
Asmita Gajjar,
ITMS, (Upcoming volunteer @ #ssmum! )